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Naruto, the crested black macaque, smiles in a monkey selfie. (Image credit to David Slater. Category: Monkey selfie. (2011, July 4). In Wikimedia. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Monkey_selfie#/media/File:Macaca_nigra_self-portrait_large.jpg)

In 2011, a wildlife photographer named David Slater traveled to Sulawesi, Indonesia, to photograph crested black macaques, a species of critically endangered monkeys.

After two days of gaining the troupe’s trust, Slater set up his camera on a tripod. Several macaques interacted with the camera and created "monkey selfies" (Slater, n.d.).

The story took off, and after several news outlets published copies of some of the photos (licensed through Slater's agent), Wikipedia posted the photo to Wikimedia Commons without paying for a license, claiming that because non-humans can't own a copyright, no one held the copyright to the image.

In 2014 the group, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), brought a lawsuit against Slater on behalf of the monkey in one of the pictures, whom they named Naruto. They argued that since Naruto pushed the shutter button, Naruto owns the copyright. They asked the court to appoint PETA to administer the proceeds from the photo to benefit Naruto and other macaques.

Find out what happened in this NPR article.

Monkey business aside, there are many high-profile examples of people fighting to get the credit they deserve.

Lawsuits over who should get the credit (and the profits) for songs, shoes, and even tattoos have had real-world consequences. Many of these ownership disputes are governed by copyright law.

But what does that mean?

Slater, D. (n.d.). Sulawesi Macaques. DJS Photography. http://www.djsphotography.co.uk/Tropical%20Forests/Sulawesi%20Macaques.htm

Slotkin, J. (2017, September 12). 'Monkey Selfie' lawsuit ends with settlement between PETA, photographer. NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/09/12/550417823/-animal-rights-advocates-photographer-compromise-over-ownership-of-monkey-selfie

Copyright

As soon as you create something that is your own work, such as a short story you’ve written or a video, you hold that work’s copyright in the United States. Copyright refers to the laws to protect the works and rights of human creators. These laws determine how or whether someone's protected work can be legally copied, shared, performed, reused, or modified. When a protected work is copied or reused without permission, that is considered copyright infringement.

Copyright infringement

When a copyrighted work is used without permission. This can include copying, reusing, performing, or creating derivative works from the copyrighted material.

Licensing copyrighted works

Most works are under full, “all rights reserved” copyright. The rights to these creative works can be sold or licensed to another person or company, who then has control over what happens to the copyrighted content. For example, a public library can license the rights to play a movie for a crowd of people during a movie night event. Or, the copyright holder for a popular book can sign a license to provide a movie studio with the rights to use their characters in a film. You can even license the rights to your life story!

Open access efforts have expanded upon traditional copyright through a more flexible alternative known as Creative Commons licenses.

Creative Commons licenses

Authors are often required to sign over their copyright to their publisher upon publication. This model enables publishers to charge outrageously high prices for journals, books, and textbooks.

To combat this, a non-profit organization called Creative Commons created the Creative Commons (CC) licenses. These licenses provide a type of copyright license that lets the creator specify the ways others can reuse their work. These licenses were created to encourage sharing by making it easy to identify which rights authors retain and which they waive.

There are six CC licenses and a public domain dedication, each with different rules. Attaching a license to your work lets others know how they may use your material. Here is a description of the licenses and the public domain dedication tool, taken from the Creative Commons website:

A table detailing the different Creative Commons licenses
Creative Commons License	Meaning
CC BY	This license enables reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, so long as attribution is given to the creator and you indicate if changes were made. The license allows for commercial use. CC BY includes the following elements: BY: credit must be given to the creditor
CC BY SA	This license enables reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format as long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use. If you remix, adapt, or build upon the material, you must license the modified material under identical terms. CC BY-SA includes the following elements: BY: credit must be given to the creator SA: SA means ShareAlike. Any adaptations you make must be shared under the same terms as the original material.
CC BY NC	This license enables reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. CC BY-NC includes the following elements: BY: credit must be given to the creator NC: Only noncommercial uses of the work are permitted
CC BY ND	This license enables reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use. CC BY-ND includes the following elements: BY: credit must be given to the creator ND: No derivatives or adaptations of the work are permitted
CC BY NC SA	This license enables reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. If you remix, adapt, or build upon the material, you must license the modified material under identical terms. CC BY-NC-SA includes the following elements: BY: credit must be given to the creator NC: Only noncommercial uses of the work are permitted SA: adaptations must be shared under the same terms
CC BY NC ND	This license enables reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. CC BY-NC-ND includes the following elements: BY: credit must be given to the creator NC: Only noncommercial uses of the work are permitted ND: No derivatives or adaptations of the work are permitted
CC0 (CC Zero)	CC0 (aka CC Zero) is a public dedication tool, which enables creators to give up their copyright and put their works into the worldwide public domain. CC0 enables reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, with no conditions.¹

Popular sites like YouTube, Wikipedia, Flickr, and others have used Creative Commons licenses for years. You can even search for images available under a Creative Commons license using Google Image Search. Check out these licenses in the Try it! section.

¹ While the Creative Commons Public Domain (CC Zero) license allows you to freely reuse content, and even sell this content, you should still use this content ethically. For instance, if you took someone's poem that is designated as public domain and claimed that you wrote it, this is still plagiarism, because this is not your work or your words.

What does this all mean to you?

As a creator and user of information, you are affected by copyright.

As an information creator:

your creative works are protected by copyright law
you have the right to decide how your works are used or shared
you can keep or sign away the copyrights to the things you create

As an information user, you need to know:

whether a work you want to share, copy, or modify is still under copyright protection (more on this in a moment)
who holds the copyright, so you know who to ask for permission for licensing if you need it
what license applies to the work
how to give proper credit to your sources to avoid copyright infringement and plagiarism

Try it! Practice searching for different copyright licenses

There are several places online that offer free images, or images under a variety of Creative Commons licenses. Some of them include the Internet Archive, The Library of Congress, and Artstor on JSTOR.

As mentioned earlier, Google also has a filter for licenses in its image search. Check out the image below to see how you can use that filter, and go try it out!

Gif showing how to do a Google search for images and filter by license

Key takeaways

Copyright laws protect the works and rights of human creators. These laws determine how or whether someone's protected work can be legally copied, shared, performed, reused, or modified.

There are multiple Creative Commons licenses that help creators specify the ways others can reuse their work.